


A Boy on a Rock

by ashesandhoney



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/M, One-Shot, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4130473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mermaid pulled the boy from the water to spite her father. </p><p>They can save each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Boy on a Rock

**Author's Note:**

> TW: there is a rape mention in this story.

“Take it off,” he said in a weak voice. She pushed herself up the rock a little higher and pursed her lips at him. He was human shaped with silver white hair that might have meant he was a faerie of some sort. She mused over that. Fae were even more dangerous than humans. Some of the mermaid clans in the Mediterranean were fae and owed their allegiances to the courts. Her’s was not. Theirs was a warlock nest. A tiny population created by an aquatic demon who had an unpleasant deal the locals that resulted in pregnant girls and safer fishing boats. She had been taught by her older sisters to avoid the other mermaids, to stay away from them. 

“It’s good,” she told him. He spoke in English, a strange language for this part of the world. She knew a little of it. Her mother spoke Arabic though she hadn’t been the one to teach her daughter to speak. Her father spoke a language unfit for human ears. Her sisters and her brothers spoke a hodgepodge of Arabic and Italian and French and Latin and Greek.  The lingua franca of the sea changed so often and they kept picking up new words and phrases and bringing them home like shiny pearls. Her collection of English words wasn't as good as the others.

“You heard me. Take it off,” he said and then his attempt at being commanding fell away and he said, “Please.”

“No. It’s good. You need it. You were blood,” she stopped because that was the wrong way to say it, “Bleeding.” The thing in question, that he wanted removed, was a squidlike sea creature that only thrived near sources of magic. She’d had to sneak it away from her home without her siblings noticing. It would suck out any poisons or infections and keep him from bleeding. She was not going to take it off. 

“You’re a mermaid,” he said. 

“You have eyes,” she said. Her tail was folded up on the rock beside her. The fins fanned and trailed in water but looked like so much fish skin draped over the rock beneath her. Scales ran up her back and her stomach and he could probably see her dorsal fin from where he lay. She was very obviously not a human. Mermaid was better than some of the other things she had been called. 

He laughed weakly and she smiled at him. He was pretty for a human. Tattered and thin but with a delicate face and such pretty hair. She’d always considered her scales gray but against the shiny silver of his hair they were blue. She had laid stretched out on the rock beside him and compared his hair to the scales on her arms and her tail while he’d been unconscious. She'd liked the contrast. She'd also looked through his pockets and spent more time then she would admit running her fingers over the patterns on his skin. Even ill he was warm.

“You pulled me out of the wreck, where is everyone else? I was traveling with my uncle. We were leaving Alicante,” he said. 

“I found no others, I’m so sorry,” she said. “What are you called?” 

“Jem, James Carstairs,” he said. “What’s your name?” 

“I am called Al Tase’a,” she said. 

“That’s pretty,” he said and he tried to repeat it but couldn’t get it right. It came out sounding like Al Tessa.

“It means the ninth,” she said, “It isn’t really a name. Just a description. I am the ninth one to be born.” 

He sat up and she refused to allow him to take the squid off of the gash in his abdomen. He stared at it once he was sitting and stretched his fingers and stared at them too. He seemed shocked to discover that he still had a body or maybe he thought he would turn into a mermaid. Some folk believed that. That the mermaids dragged you down and made you one of them but that was the fae, not her kind. She looked at him, following his gaze over his fingers and his arms as he did but she couldn't see whatever it was that baffled him so much. 

“How long have I been here?” he asked. 

“Three suns, days, three days,” she said. “You are hungry. You will be hungry.” 

She started to swing her tail around and slide back into the water to find something a human might eat and he stopped her with a warm hand on her arm. She stared at his fingers. Her hair was drying from the sun and was starting to become a mass of dark curls. She smoothed it back to distract herself from him. Things that were not family didn't touch her. No one in this corner of the sea would dare touch one of her father's children. She was safe not only from dangers but from all overtures of friendship too. This human boy didn't know that and she decided not to tell him. 

“I am dying,” he said. 

“You are hungry and you need clean water. You are not dying, not any more,” she said but he shook his head at her like she didn’t understand. His eyes were wide and incredulous. She touched his face. Humans could be strange about what touching was allowed but he didn’t flinch away from her so this mustn’t be against their rules. 

“I am addicted to a drug. To go three days without it, I should be dying. To last three days while injured… it’s impossible,” he said. 

“Why would you have drugs? Drugs are like poisons. The -” she didn’t have a human word in any language for the thing and she didn’t want to use an demonic one in the presence of this boy so she said, “healer fish can take them from your blood. That is why you can’t take it off. Not yet. Stay here.” 

She brought him foods he didn’t like but ate without complaint. She sat with him and cajoled him into trading stories with her. This was why she dragged humans back to shore though it was expressly against the rules her father set. He interacted with the humans. His children served him. Anything outside her little life fascinated Tase’a especially humans. They had stories she had never heard before. 

This was what she took in payment for saving their lives. A story, something she didn’t know. 

“Will you drown me if you don’t like my story?” he asked when she told him. 

“Of course not but I will be very sad if you do not share one,” she said with an exaggerated expression and he’d laughed again. 

This boy told her of Shanghai and London and the Shadowhunter capital of Alicante which he had visited with his uncle. She lay on the rock in the sunshine until her hair was completely dry - something her sister had told her to never allow to happen because it was dangerous - and asked him questions. He told her every answer. He didn't tell her to stop asking stupid questions or to go entertain herself. He just answered and then asked his own. 

“I’ve never found a Shadowhunter before, is it difficult to hunt shadows?” she asked and he’d explained what it really meant. She fell silent and looked to the west. To him it must have looked like she was staring at nothing in shock or horror.

“There are accords. There is a law. I am not a murderer. My people aren’t a danger to yours,” he said but that was not what she was thinking. His people killed demons. It was possible to kill a demon. She’d never imagined it. It was like killing the sea. You didn’t think of killing the sea but here he was telling her that he had done it, had killed demons like the thing that was her father. 

She rolled up to him and he had leaned in as he said the words again. He promised her again in a low voice that he wouldn't hurt her. She was close to him and the sunburn across his cheekbones pulled her attention. She didn’t respond, only checked his wound under the squid and prodded at the skin beneath it. His hair was different. Less perfectly silver. Scattered strands of black or brown marred it. She pulled herself a little closer to look in his eyes and the same was happening there. 

She touched his face again and he leaned in a little closer. She’d seen this. People on the shore, young humans sneaking away from watchful eyes to press themselves together. He put his mouth to hers and she stayed still. Was there an expected response to this? Human customs would never make sense to her no matter how many stories she collected.

When she did not pull away his lips tugged into a smile that she felt rather than saw and then he moved them against hers. That was different. She felt it like a shiver down her back and she hesitated before she tried to echo it. He didn’t stop and she wound her tail around his legs as he wrapped an arm low enough around her back that her fins didn’t get in the way. 

She was on her side and he was curled around her like her sisters did when one of them had gone to see Father. He needed fed and that was their task. It was never pleasant. They held together after to wipe away the memories. 

This was different. It was close and comforting like that was but it was different. His warmth. The way he kept putting his mouth to hers. It all came together into something indefinably different. Wonderful. Comforting and electric and so warm. 

“Is it difficult to kill a demon?” she asked him with her forehead to his and the sun sinking down toward the horizon so the sea around them was painted in the reds and golds of sunset. 

“Sometimes,” he said. 

“Would you help me try?” she asked. 

“I’d need help, weapons,” he said. 

“I don’t know where to find weapons,” she said. 

“I do, I just don’t know which way to go to shore from here,” he told her. 

“I know that,” she said. 

She fell asleep dreaming of a world that had been unimaginable the day before: a world without her father in it.  For the first time since the night of her birth, she fell asleep above the water. She lay with the Shadowhunter boy on the rock and they held onto one another. 


End file.
